Prosecutor Took Trips From Alleged Smuggler

Bryan Ray Kazarian, the Orange County prosecutor arrested last year in connection with an alleged drug ring, accepted several trips to Las Vegas from the person accused of being the ring’s leader, according to court documents unsealed Monday.

Kazarian also aided the ring’s leader by obtaining sensitive information on a local narcotics case, according to the documents.

Kazarian pleaded guilty in October to a federal drug-trafficking conspiracy charge, but details of the plea agreement were not made public until Monday.

The documents paint the picture of a deputy district attorney disenchanted by his job and seduced by the glitz and money on the other side of the law.

Kazarian, 36, is among nine co-defendants who have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with authorities. Six remaining defendants, including the alleged ringleader, John David Ward, 29, are scheduled to go on trial Oct. 3.

According to prosecutors, Ward and his associates smuggled methamphetamine in shipments of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and laundered money from the $580,000-a-week operation.

In the plea agreement, Kazarian admitted he accepted free trips to Las Vegas from Ward beginning in 1998. He was hoping to leave the district attorney’s office, where he had worked for four years, and establish a private practice. He saw Ward, who owned a silk-screening business, as a potential future client.

It is not clear whether Kazarian suspected Ward’s alleged involvement in drug smuggling from the beginning, but he eventually “came to know that Ward was a drug dealer,” he stated in court documents. Still, he “provided assistance to Ward because he hoped to work for Ward’s legitimate businesses one day,” the documents say.

In 1998, Kazarian wrote a letter to an Idaho judge, seeking leniency for Ward, who had pleaded guilty there to one felony count of distributing cocaine. In 1999, Kazarian used his position in the district attorney’s office to obtain information on the investigation of one of Ward’s alleged associates in the drug ring.

According to the terms of Kazarian’s plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend a lesser sentence than the 10 years to life prescribed by law in exchange for his cooperation, including possibly testifying against Ward.

“He made a terrible error in judgment,” Kazarian’s attorney, Brian O’Neill, said Monday. “He knew he was wrong. He agreed to cooperate with the government because he wanted to attempt to minimize the impact of the wrong he has done.”